Sure, we don't need little political messages in articles on archaeology or movies that distort history.
There's been a long tradition of drawing a radical contrast between the Greeks and Asia or Africa -- "the West versus the rest."
There's something in that, but it can be taken too far.
The trend in academia recently has been to study the similarities between the ancient Greeks and the Asian and North African societies of their day.
That can also be taken too far, but it was inevitable that scholars would go down that path after decades of taking the other.
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What are the odds, though, that two scholars would spontaneously choose to hang a modern-day political message on their speculations? It's possible, of course, but maybe the author of the article was trawling for an anti-Trump (or anti-Brexit) message, setting her subjects up to give her the responses she wanted.
You understand.
I think, partly, they were parading their 'bonifides' to their colleagues.
(See, we got our jabs in at Trump)